


Re:BIRTH

by orphan_account



Series: After Crucible [5]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-07
Updated: 2013-05-07
Packaged: 2017-12-10 17:44:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/788405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post Synthesis ending.</p><p>Wrex contemplates the relief of the genophage cure beneath the weight of synthesis.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Re:BIRTH

Krogan are not equal. Were their world to have been kinder, or were they to have been born with weaker bodies and more cunning minds, then maybe they might have risen on their own without first having been played as pawns in a strategist's game. Instead, nature had rolled them large bodies, large muscles, large tempers, and outside nurturing had hardened them into weapons that killed and killed and killed until they succeeded. Later, revelry, gratitude, and the promise of eternal hope fed egotism into their largeness, made them monstrous. And as all weapons inevitably do, they recoiled against their creators. In return, the nurturers who introduced them to the galaxy would systematically kill the only weak life among them: their young. 

Krogan aren't superior either, but Wrex maintained the pretense as best he could around his people. Standing atop a mound of rotting young, krogans notched their kills into the barrels of their shotguns until there was no space left to carve, and then they'd start anew with better guns and bigger ambitions. If he filled them with pride, they would battle for the honour of their race and the glory of Tuchanka; if he sat idle on his throne as they drained themselves of what it meant to be krogan, they fought for credits or killed for the sake of causing death. 

Wrex built them a future on the back of a woman who was indifferent to everything about a person but their character, and who had the good grace to be more skilled with a firearm and a harsh word than most anyone he'd known. She lifted krogan spirits with a promise of salvation and in delivering that promise, she became a krogan truer than most.

He could feel her inside of him now; a tickle at the outskirts of thought, a scramble inside of his code that covered itself well enough that he could never track it further than its point of expression. The ripples of sameness that reverberated across the universe after she unseated the Reapers from their throne of destruction were meant to help every person, every thing, every life, he knew, but the green afterglow of synthesis did nothing to illuminate the krogan. After the shock, the disgust, and the powerlessness of having his body and his people irrevocably changed, he was left with emptiness residing in the precise spot of his gut that hope once occupied. He wanted to ask her what the hell she was thinking but there was no point; Shepard was just an abstraction of herself now and she no longer held any answers. 

Bakara sat beside him atop a platform of wreckage, her belly swollen with life, her spirit rife with restlessness. The synthetic parts of her body were compensating for the physical strain of pregnancy almost too well and she was finding it difficult to bear the process of waiting to deliver her child while she felt so healthy and unburdened.

There was only one child inside of her now. Synthesis had reduced the krogans' clutch size, too; at most, a single pregnancy would produce five to seven eggs, but that was rare and more often than not they gave birth like humans and turians and asari and salarians did; to one child, maybe two, maybe three at a time. It made Wrex livid at first, and then detached him from the excitement that once poured from his mouth in a constant stream of dreams and pride and plans for how he would replace his children. Now, he spent too much time in cold, contemplative silence. 

Bakara was choking on its thickness. “You seem troubled,” she said. 

“Nah,” he lied. “Probably just your hormones messing with you again.” 

“Wrex,” she said in a voice that meant she'd beat him sooner than she'd put up with his bullshit.

“Fine, fine. Just tryin' to figure out if this is what we fought for.”

She put her hands on her belly. The baby's armoured eggshell was hard. It would protect him well through his delivery. “We fought for our future. These new numbers will keep our people from overrunning more planets than can contain us. And what does the form of our children matter, so long as they exist?”

“Yeah, I guess,” he said and then he went back to saying nothing at all.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

The first time Wrex held a newborn krogan he had been small and young himself, and it surprised him how the swaddled little ball of life felt like a fever in his hands. Krogan babies were fragile, he knew; they either gave up in the womb or they shattered like glass at their first kiss of air. And they were precious in a way that nothing else was on Tuchanka. Everything about them made him nervous. “Should it be this hot?” he had asked.

“How the hell should I know?” answered the female. 

Little baby Mordin had been born with barely any heat to him at all, but that was the way of synthesis. Too much warmth would result in too many systems malfunctions and the body was regulated to about 25% of its usual operating temperature. Or something to that effect. Wrex didn't care much for doctor blather, he just cared that his son was well enough to survive, to thrive, to one day inherit his mission to raise the krogan above their violent beginnings. 

The boy could wrap his tiny fingers around his father's thumb and squeeze hard enough that Wrex hurt from the amount of pride he felt. He slept well and rarely cried, and he had a deep, rumbling growl that he liberally used in demand of a round of peek-a-boo from his father, a lullaby from his mother, a story from Grunt about dinosaurs storming the Reapers while a herd of armed sharks tried to cut them down with flamethrowers and laser rifles. Then, satisfied, he would return his attention to his plush Shepard doll, all chewed up yet still holding together.

Sometimes, Wrex thought he felt someone else's love swell inside of him at sight of his son, proud like an aunt watching her nephew from a distance. And though he still wasn't sure what his thoughts on synthesis were, he knew his son was everything that he wanted.

He supposed he owed Shepard one after all.


End file.
